Taliban denied access to 9.5 bn dollars of Afghan fund

The U.S. has frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank and stopped shipments of cash to the nation as it tries to keep a Taliban-led government from accessing the money. The official said that any central bank assets that the Afghan government has in the U.S. will not be available to the Taliban, which remains on the Treasury Department’s sanctions designation list.

The move followed a decision by the US treasury secretary Janet L Yellen and officials in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Sunday when it ordered to freeze Afghan government reserves held in US banks. The International Monetary Fund estimate put Afghan central bank assets at $9.5 billion till April, a sizeable portion of which is in accounts with the New York Federal Reserve and other US-based financial institutions. The US government didn’t need any fresh authority to freeze Afghan monetary reserves as the country’s government fell to the Taliban, which continued to face financial sanctions in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack.

Ajmal Ahmadi, the acting governor of Afghanistan's  Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) central bank, took to Twitter on Monday to post that he came to know about remittances being stopped by the US to prevent the Taliban from gaining access to the money. According to the report, the US State Department was consulted before the action as was the White House, adding that the Biden administration was contemplating other actions as well to pressure the Taliban. According to Bloomberg, the DAB has $9.5bn in assets, a sizeable portion of which is in accounts with the New York Federal Reserve and US-based financial institutions. Afghanistan’s currency — Afghani — has faced record losses since Monday, the first working day since the Taliban takeover this weekend.